Homo Deus: Humanity’s Evolution from Social Institutions to World Peace
This article is the transcript from episode #0 of an eleven-part (plus 1) podcast that I released between November 6, 2020, and February 15, 2021. The name of the podcast is “Homo Deus: Humanity’s Evolution from Social Institutions to World Peace”. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast directories. I produced it after reading Yuval Noah Harari’s best-selling book, “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”. Harari’s book was a catalyst for me to organize my thoughts and try to start a conversation. Harari touches on several important themes in his book, including today’s incredible pace of technological development, the difference between humans and animals, and the rise of human civilization. In the end, he predicts that technology will transform us into super-humans. We will become biologically enhanced humans, cyborg beings or possibly fully non-organic beings. I really enjoyed Harari’s book and agree with most of what he writes. However, I think his predicted future is not the most likely outcome. Rather, I think humanity is likely to experience a change in the way we cooperate, similar to what happened last time. Harari’s spends a fair bit of time in his book talking about last time. He describes how Homo sapiens started cooperating in a new way about 70,000 years ago. It was this change he tells us, that led to our dominance over the other animals, not technology or intelligence. Prior to the change we cooperated based on personal acquaintance and the dominance structure. Afterwards we cooperated based on stories and social institutions. The new approach enabled us to work together in much larger numbers and gave us a huge survival advantage. It is a remarkable story. We should learn from it and not underestimate the power of natural forces. I expect human evolution to proceed organically, as it always has in the past. I agree that the intensification of our technology and socialization is leading us to a breaking point — but I expect this pressure will result in a discontinuity, just like it did last time. This is what my podcast is about.
Episode:
[0:00] Hi. My name is Brian. And this podcast is “Homo Deus: Humanity’s evolution from social institutions to world peace.”
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[0:22] I recently read the internationally bestselling book by Yuval Noah Harari called, Homo Deus: A Short History of Tomorrow. In his book, Harari predicts Homo sapiens (that’s us) will transform ourselves into enhanced beings. And this transformation is happening right now, at a quicker pace than you and I are probably aware of. In particular, our pursuit of Immortality, Happiness and Divinity, is intensifying along a number of technological fronts such as genetic engineering, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology and biological manipulation of brain chemistry. These pursuits will transform humans bit by bit to the point that we aren’t really Homo sapiens anymore. These super-humans might be (1) biologically enhanced humans, (2) cyborg beings or possibly even (3) fully non-organic beings. In any of these cases, they won’t be Homo sapiens anymore. A new name is needed. Harari calls them — Homo Deus.
[1:31] I loved Harari’s book. He is a wonderful writer and has so many great insights. It was eye-opening for me to see how far we are ‘down the path’ with certain technologies. I appreciated how he started his story of humanity with the animals, and then explained who we are from that. I totally agree with this approach. If we really want to understand who we are, we need to take a clear sighted look at how we emerged from the animal kingdom and what, if any, differences there are between us and our animal-cousins.
[2:04] As I read Harari’s book I felt excitement building within me. His insights were fantastic but I also felt he missed some things. And my thinking was that these overlooked aspects of humanity’s evolution lead Harari to the wrong conclusion about our most likely future. I wanted to talk about it but there weren’t enough opportunities. So I decided to create this podcast.
[2:30] In his book Harari explains that what really sets Homo sapiens apart from other animals, is that they can cooperate together flexibly. That is, even though humans had the best technology and the most advance intelligence on the planet, possibly for a 5 or 6 million years, they had only a small impact on the planet’s ecology. But somehow, about 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens developed the ability to cooperate together with flexibility, and that made all the difference. This ability to cooperate flexibly, lead humanity’s ability to dominate all other species.
[3:10] I agree with Harari’s assessment. However, I also believe that another change in the way Homo sapiens cooperate is coming, and it will have implications just as significant as the last one. Homo sapiens will learn to cooperate together selflessly, and this will lead to world peace. When this happens, these new humans will be as different from Homo sapiens as Homo sapiens were from the homids that preceded them. It think it would be reasonable to call them, Homo Deus.
[3:43] That’s a lot to take in, and world peace part might be especially difficult to believe. Looking around at the world today there is violence and disharmony everywhere, and many things seem to be getting worse. If this is your assessment I agree. And in this podcast, I will spend a fair bit of time arguing that things are actually a lot worse than many of us think, and that we can expect significant trouble in our future. It is wishful thinking that we can somehow stickhandle around ecological disaster and our other problems and just keep on growing our economy indefinitely. No, there is a reckoning coming. We will have to face the consequences of the world we have built.
But even as we start our journey into these very difficult times, I will argue that there are good, solid, evolutionary reasons for hope.
[4:42] Harari refers to grey wolves several times in his book. So let’s talk about the wolves. Please imagine for a moment that you are a grey wolf about 15,000 years ago. You, along with your partner, are leading a small pack living in a mostly forested region. The main focus of your daily life is ensuring the hunts for deer and other game are successful, and that other wolf packs don’t infringe on your territory. If everything goes really well you will keep this going for a few years, at which point you will no longer be strong enough to defend your territory. In addition to these day-to-day concerns, there is one particular annoyingly member of your pack who keeps on following you around. Not only is his over-attachment annoying, you describe him to others as “needy”, but he keeps on telling you the way forward for wolves is to become more friendly. “That there would come a day when wolves, as ferocious beasts would be extinct in most of the world but wolves as friendly companions will fill the world, often living lives of unimaginable luxury, happiness and longevity.” Would you have believed him? Mostly likely not. After all you would have argued, the world doesn’t work that way. In the real world, it is the most ferocious hunters that rise to the top. But you would have been wrong. Your reasoning was sound however, you failed to consider that this reality was about to be disrupted by the deepening dominance of humans, which was changing everything. Yes, the path of evolution for wolves was heading towards a tipping point. In his book, Harari notes that in Germany today, (which is the land of the Grimm Brothers, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf) there are less than a hundred wolves but in contrast, it is home to 5 million domestic dogs. Yes, the path of evolution for wolves was disrupted.
[6:52] An interesting question is, should the wolves have seen it coming? If we had been in the wolves’ shoes, would we have seen it coming?
- Well certainly not 70,000 years ago when we experienced the Cognitive Revolution. At this point it would have been impossible to see this coming. Homo sapiens were just an insignificant ape with little impact on their ecosystems. They had no impact on wolves.
- What about 15,000 years ago when the first dogs were domesticated? Likely the answer is still no. Domestication was just a fringe activity. It would have been hard to see it as significant.
- What about 10,000 years ago when we were building the first agricultural civilizations in Mesopotamia, India and China? Likely still ‘no’. These settlements only covered a very small portion of the earth’s fertile land. Someone would have had to have incredible foresight to predict the extinction of wolves and the rise domesticated dogs.
- What about 300 years ago just before the Industrial Revolution? Well, it still wouldn’t have been easy, but at this point at least it was starting to become more clear. Wolves still thrived in Germany but for those who wanted to see it, their territory was getting smaller and smaller.
[8:20] Yes, evolution can sometimes take surprising twists, and the turn in the road may not be obvious until we are right in front of it. Perhaps we ourselves are now at a tipping point? We should remain open to this possibility, especially given the incredible pace of technological and social change we find ourselves in today.
[8:44] So in this podcast we will walk through Harari’s book chapter by chapter. Each chapter is excellent and worth spending time on. I will summarize what Harari said, and then discuss other aspects of humanity’s evolution that are pertinent to the chapter’s material. Ideally you would have read Harari’s book, but if not, the summaries I provide should be helpful. If you enjoyed Harari’s book or enjoy thinking about the future, or agree that thinking about our future is important, this podcast is for you. I certainly believe it is important. We need to think hard about our future and do all we can now to build a better world right now. This is why I am making this podcast. So even if you don’t agree with my conclusions in the end, I hope you find the journey worthwhile.
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[9:46] Please join me for the first episode, which is on the launch date, November 25. The first podcast focuses on chapter 1. In chapter 1 Harari claims that war, plague and famine are the three great challenges that humanity has faced, and that we have now largely overcome them. Therefore, in the future, humanity will be, and already are, focused on immortality, happiness and divinity. We will ask the following questions: Has war really been defeated? Or should we still be concerned about the possibility of another wide-scale war? And are famine, plague and war really the three great scourges of humanity? Or has humanity faced an even greater challenge from something else? Please tune in to the first episode on November 25th.
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